Gay/Straight Ad Watch: Campari, The Gay, Straight, or Androgenous Apertif?

Straight Guy,

Frequent reader and commenter Straight in Upstate read your January 4 post about Jessica Alba being "photochopped" for the 2009 Campari calendar and asked, "What is Campari?" I came online to get a description of Campari. In addition, I found this very intriguing commercial:



Don't worry Straight Guy, it looks like there is a Salma Hayek Campari ad just for you.

If I had known how much "chase me, chase me, change me, change me" I could wrench from a glass of Campari, I would have tried one sooner. Mostly, I wanted to cross it off my list of literary potent potables. Characters in novels by Virgina Woolf to Thomas Wolfe to the uber-macho Hemingway are always drinking aperitifs. FYI: Campari tastes like a combination of cough syrup, quinine, and chalk. I suspect it was created to ward off malaria.

Back to the commercial: I thought the two faun-like people were both women, so at least the dude offered some element of surprise. I'm a sucker for the tension between the hidden and the revealed. Sometimes the hidden is more exciting and the reveal is a let down. Which brings us back to our recent posts about gay/straight guys and their undies.

Straight Guy, I don't think gay guys really fall for the kind of titillation in this commercial. I fell for the aesthetic and the architecture of the location. Do Straight Guys find this stuff seductive?

--Gay Guy


"Yes" to Salma (check her out seducing Alec Baldwin currently on 30 Rock). "No" to everything else. Campari looks like the weird red syrup at IHOP to me.

-- Straight Guy

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This all reminds me of a recent story about the company that had the iconic "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!" ad. It become a cultural reference and punchline...and the company folded because no one could remember the name of the company, even if they sorta remembered the product. OK, it's a little different - I can remember Campari, but why should I drink it? Will it make me a cross-dresser? Will I really get laid by Salma Hayek? It's interesting cinema but I think I'll just buy some M-D 20/20 instead. I could see Hemingway drinking Mad Dog just before running with the bulls or going off to kill marlin.

Anonymous said...

To be honest, the commercial makes me a little afraid of Campari now. Glad I crossed it off my list already. I'll keep my courage up with the classic gin and tonic, thank you very much.

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